Category: communication

Reader ‘alarmed’ by partners sharing emails

Hi,

I am extremely new to the poly scene and am still learning community ‘norms.’  In relation to that, I recently read the post on this blog from October 6, 2013 entitled, “Should I let my partner read my emails?”

It was alarming.

If a partner of mine asked to be allowed to read my emails (or whatever communications) and I said “yes,” I would be guilty of betraying the confidences of everyone who ever had sent and everyone who ever does send me email (or whatever communications).

My family sends me deeply personal messages. Friends send me deeply personal messages. It is *MY* responsibility to protect those confidences. They send those messages to ME, not to me-and-whatever-suspicious-partners-I-might-ever-have.

I know there is no “general policy,” but is this something of a community norm? To be expected to demonstrate trustworthiness by fundamentally betraying the communications of everyone I’ve ever known?

Is the notion that one should “always act as if everyone you’d ever met and cared about was watching” interpreted to mean that I should actually ENABLE everyone to watch? Should I put a video camera in my bedroom and distribute the live feed and recordings to anyone I care about – present or future – who wants it?

I feel like that would be betrayal on a grand scale. Furthermore, if I have a friend who behaves that way, I would certainly want to be made aware in advance that anything I send that friend might also be seen by any of his/her partners.

Please help me understand how poly people deal with this in real life. Do people actually give their partners this kind of access? If they do, do they make any effort to inform everyone else they communicate with that their communications are NOT private? How do people handle ‘crazy ex’ issues with this?

Thank you,
Loyal For Real

Dear L4R:

Since I practice open email communication with my partner, and wrote much of what likely surprised you about that post, I’ll explain my personal perspective.

First off, there is no workable universal policy for openness within a relationship, whether poly, traditional, or otherwise.  The best policy is the one you and your partner/s decide works best for you, and that may change from time to time. What I recommend is the optimal scenario from my perspective: open and honest communication to an extreme, the logical conclusion to the underpinning of ethical nonmonogamy.

Put into practice, however, total transparency isn’t realistic in all situations.  I see a difference between SECRETS with which you’ve been entrusted, and COMMUNICATIONS.

Let me pose it this way: if you received a message involving an interesting / problematic / curious / emotionally charged topic, would you feel comfortable discussing that topic with your best friend?  I don’t see any real difference between discussing the contents of a conversation with my partner, and actually sharing that conversation with my partner. If there’s an expectation of secrecy within a specific message or conversation (whether implicit or explicit), then I would tell my partner there was something personal or private that wouldn’t be appropriate to share, explain why, and ask that partner to avoid that particular area; perhaps I’d even delete it after reading, with my partner’s knowledge I was doing so and why.  But barring extenuating circumstances, I think it reasonable to expect that anything you tell, write, or message another person these days is likely to be shared, especially to a significant other if they have one.  The only question is where any of us draw the line between what we consider private, and what we consider fair game for sharing.

While I understand my position might not meet your particular needs or beliefs, I explained why I do it that way and why I consider it ideal, even if untenable for some. So is this a betrayal at all, let alone one of epic proportions?  I don’t think so at all, although your mileage may (and likely does) vary. Mischa?

As Leon pointed out, if the topic of the message is so secretive that you can’t talk about it with your partner, then you probably can’t have the kind of open relationships that Leon and I do – and that’s totally okay! FBI, CIA and NSA people can be poly too, as long as they are up-front about their reasons, lol

Personally, my partners have access to my online calendar and my messages (their fingerprints unlock my phone) and I have the same access. Do we pick up each other’s phones and scroll through texts and emails? Absolutely not, because we respect each other’s privacy. Giving each other access is one way we show that we have nothing to hide from each other.

For example, to think about it another way: If people expect me to hide something from my partners, I feel that’s a big “ask” and it’s incumbent upon them to inform me of that expectation so I can arrange a phone call or a meeting, or tell them I’m not comfortable with keeping something from the people closest to me.

That’s a 180-degree flip from your belief that people expect you to keep all their communications confidential. But the problem with that assumption is that you won’t know for sure what you can share with your partner(s) and what you can’t because EVERYTHING is assumed to be confidential. If your relationships never intersect then I guess you’re fine, but what happens if your partners and friends meet? How will you know what you can share so they don’t remain strangers?

In the end, it all boils down to consent. Your worldview is that nothing can be shared without consent, but I’m guessing that people end up sharing some of it anyway and violating that non-consent. Our worldview is that everything is shared unless WE consent to keep it secret from our partners. This ensures that whatever needs to be kept private is handled appropriately and leaves us free to share everything else without violating anyone’s privacy expectations.

Thanks for writing in and giving us a chance to once again address this sensitive topic!

Open relationship threatened by desperate wife

Hello. I have been looking for somewhere/someone to talk to and get advice/input on my situation.

I’ve been in a relationship for 3 years now; he is married and until now it has been what I consider an affair. He has been torn about leaving the 20-year marriage because of various reasons, mostly the kids. Right from the beginning our relationship was very open and I have never been jealous or bothered by his wife. We had often said it’s too bad she wasn’t open to a poly life. We both continued on and as time progressed, so did our relationship. He had decided that he was done with the marriage and we were going to have a life together; an open poly life. We enjoy sexual partners outside of ours but only together – our agreement that works. We planned on moving in together after he had lived his own a while, giving time for his kids to get to know me.

Last week his wife has out of nowhere offered him a deal of staying together in order to not hurt the kids separating. She has proposed they try an open relationship. I have told him I don’t want this. I can’t see it working as I don’t think she can understand the difference between an open relationship and a poly lifestyle. She is trying to control and give terms that cater more to simple sexual partners outside of the marriage. Example: you are only allowed 2 hours with someone. There are so many more things that factor into it, being that he and I are in a full-on relationship. Am I correct to assume this?

I don’t agree that considering an open relationship is a way to fix a troubled relationship. I feel it will create bigger issues. He has always been secretive with her, always had affairs because he has always desired the poly life and she hasn’t. I am also afraid that she will try to control and manipulate in order to do anything to save the marriage. He and I have been very open about all of this talking and expressing fears feelings and concerns. I am so torn between losing him and risking the chance of all this trying it out blowing up into a nightmare. He is unsure of what he wants to do. He wants us both but I don’t know if he wants her just to keep kids or if he is truly still in love with her. For him to decide, I know. I guess my main question is: can this work? Can a 20-year marriage that’s been troubled and an affair that’s been 3 years even possibly work turning into a poly life?

Ugh, so confused lol. Thank you in advance.

Dear So Confused,

There’s no denying that this is a very complicated and potential volatile situation. You’ve done a great job in explaining the myriad factors and forces at work.

The short answer is that you are right – opening a relationship is almost never a good way to fix a relationship so your fears are not unfounded. However, the option to avoid this route does not take into account your presence in the relationship. The ideal solution for him would be for it to work out with both his wife and you, and the children. The ideal for her is for you to go away and for him to recommit to a monogamous relationship with her.

But the ideal for you is a little murkier. Even if they divorce and you begin an open relationship with him, there will still be the kids to consider, so it’s not likely the ex-wife will be out of your life completely for a while (I don’t know how old the kids are, but with a 20-year marriage they probably aren’t too young). So it behooves you to create a situation where the wife is as much a happily integrated part of everyone’s lives as she can be.

If your partner loves you, it shouldn’t matter if he also loves her (unless he decides he wants to be monogamous). So the reasons for him staying with her are irrelevant. I think the real issue is you need to insist that you have equal say in the rules that are being discussed in the relationship that now includes all three of you. Making rules that affect you without your consent or participation is disrespectful. Just because she has children with him doesn’t automatically make her more important than you – or at least it shouldn’t.

The best solution would be for the three of you to sit down and discuss your wants for agreements and come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I know – easier said than done. Part of the process is to educate the wife on what being poly and having a poly relationship actually means, since she seems to associate it with swinging. But if this isn’t workable, you may have to insist on rules of your own, ones that respect you as a person and give you at least the minimum of what you want out of the relationship while maintaining your ability to pursue others that satisfy the difference.

Leon, whatcha got for her?

Well, there’s quite a bit to unpack. You’ve got a 20+ year marriage with kids to deal with, a relationship with the oft-cheating husband to maintain, and a potential consensual non-monogamous (CNM) relationship to negotiate with the wife. Sounds like a pretty challenging time for everyone.

The first thing I’m going to say is when I’ve seen this scenario play out, it’s USUALLY the person in the middle being dishonest with both partners. Our society trains people in relationships to always tell our partners what we think they want to hear, skewing reality as needed to present a good story to each. When someone maintains multiple relationships – especially in secret – there’s a huge incentive to tell one partner one thing, and the other something completely different. I mean, this looks exactly like the so-common-it’s-a-cliche scenario of the husband who swears his marriage is over and he’s going to leave his wife – but ultimately he never does and the “other woman” is left in the cold. The two wrinkles here are 1) it’s happening to YOU (which means, of course, that YOUR situation is somehow different), and 2) that CNM is an option going forward.

Regarding #1: while you’re in a relationship you’re subjective, and logical observations usually lose out to emotional convictions. Ever been in this situation? Your friends will tell you someone’s not good for you, and you’ll respond, “Oh, but you don’t know him; our situation might look that way but is really another. He/We/This isn’t at all like you’re saying.” And then down the line you break up, and you realize your friends were right all along! “How could I have been so blind?” Well, that’s subjectivity vs objectivity. And right now, you’re subjective. I imagine if a friend of yours described this scenario to you, you’d likely be less charitable to the husband.

But thanks to #2, all is not lost! Even if I’m right and there’s been a lot of double-dealing going on here, CNM might offer a way out – but only if all parties have a meeting of the minds. You’re correct in suggesting that entering a consensual non-monogamous relationship to save a troubled mono relationship is often a recipe for disaster. This certainly looks like it could be! Especially since his wife is presumably offering an open relationship as a last-ditch effort to keep the marriage intact (whether or not she’s using the kids as an excuse is ultimately irrelevant), and would presumably agree to anything as long as she gets to maintain whatever it is she feels is crucial enough to save. To her, it’s likely a case of using as much leverage as she can, to maintain as much control and relationship as she can.

If this is going to work at all, all three of you will need to get on the same page. If either of you on the ends of the V-shape see the other as a threat (hard not to) then any negotiated agreement would be under duress, and neither fair nor morally enforceable. Perhaps an experienced mediator could help – either a professional or someone you all know and trust as a friend? It’s a longshot idea, but if this is going to work it would likely benefit from someone external to explain how CNM works and help coordinate agreements, to avoid the appearance of you and him ganging up on his wife.

Ultimately, you might be more experienced with and open to CNM, but you’ve also been engaging in a secret affair with a married guy. You’re going to need to take responsibility for that – which takes away any moral advantage you might want to claim for your “full-on relationship.” It sounds to me like you want what you want – which is a happy CNM relationship with him, with his wife gratefully accepting any crumbs you and he feel like leaving her. I have a very strong feeling that’s NOT going to fly with her, which means you’re going to have to make some compromises, even if they’re seemingly unfair to you – like no overnights or shorter time periods or whatever, at least to start, with the expressed plan of expanding them as the wife gets more comfortable with having you around. At least on paper, she’s the only blameless one here.

The best thing you can do is be 100% open and honest with both of them, and do your damndest to make sure both he and his wife are open and honest with each of you. If you and she can get to know each other, then you can understand each other. Once that happens you can try to work together to help identify and protect the others’ most important needs via the relationship with this guy – and only THEN would this situation work well for everyone. There’s a long, long way between here and there, but it’s possible. Good luck.

New girlfriend rattles nervous wife

Hello,

My husband and I just started our open marriage. We’ve been discussing an open relationship for awhile now. Well, husband met a girl in a show they were in together, and he fell for her. He was hiding it from me for a bit, but finally opened up to me. They scheduled a date after he and I decided to open our relationship, but she didn’t know that then. He told her last night, and they are meeting tonight.

I’m very nervous. We have had a threesome before with another woman, and I was fine. This is a little different. Maybe it’s just because it’s new.

She also wanted to add a rule, but I don’t know how I feel about it. She didn’t want sex to happen every night because she doesn’t want to feel cheap. I don’t know how I feel about limiting my sex-life with my husband, but I also want her to feel respected in our relationship. What do I do? And how do I get through the nerves??

Nervous Newbie

Dear Newbie,

First of all, let me start by apologizing that we couldn’t respond the day you wrote in time to address your nerves. I hope you managed to get through your husband’s date without any undue fuss.

It’s not unusual to be nervous about a new situation in your relationship. I think the best way to deal with nerves is to acknowledge to your partner that you are feeling apprehensive or concerned, and share the source of your concerns to give them a chance to assuage them. Probably the worst thing you can do is to keep it all bottled up inside and let that fester into resentment or worse. I find that the more you talk out an issue, the less threatening it becomes. 

Successful poly relationships require communication. You and your partner are in this together, and you both have to be equally committed to the idea of an open relationship in order for it to work. So when feelings are at risk, someone needs to speak up, check in, and talk it out. It might feel very uncomfortable at first, but given time and experience, it gets easier and better, and you’ll find out a lot about who your partner really is. And isn’t that why you’re in the relationship in the first place?

Second, about that rule. There’s a general consensus in the poly community that rules should not be enforced on people who didn’t have a say in them. So it sounds like the three of you need to discuss the proposed rule before it goes into effect. It’s important to approach this discussion with an open mind and be willing to talk about different options. 

Try to get to the heart of everyone’s wants and needs. What is the relationship between sex and her self-esteem? What other ways could she feel valued, legitimized and safe in the relationship that doesn’t involve limitations on sex? If you and your husband skip sex one night a week, how would that affect everybody? Who decides what nights?

These kind of conversations seem strange because we live in a monogamy-dominated society, but they should really be pretty straightforward if everyone can be comfortable talking about their relationship wants and needs in an egalitarian spirit. Since your husband is the point of the “V” (he’s the person with the relationship with both you and his other partner, your “metamour”) he should be taking the lead on facilitating this discussion. It sounds like you just need to get him to start that ball rolling.

Over to you, Leon!

Hi Newbie! Glad you and your partner trust each other enough to open up your relationship responsibly!  

I’m a little concerned that some of it was apparently started without your knowledge and consent, but that’s a common faux pas among newly opened partners. It can take a while to learn how to find the most mutually satisfying balance between completely open honesty, and the instinct to protect our partners from hearing what we think they’ll take as bad news. As long as you and your partner’s underlying relationship satisfaction stays a mutual priority (with your needs being met as well as his), I think new metamour relationships can create a lot of fun and compersion for all three of you. 

Nerves are usually due to suspense: not knowing how things will work out and being worried about the outcome. You’ll probably notice that nervous feeling fading, or transitioning positively into excitement or comfort, as you gain more experience with the scenario. Make sure you stay in touch with your own needs during this time, and make sure you’re communicating them in ways they’ll each understand.

Generally, when someone wants to impose a rule that NOT everyone agrees with, I suggest finding out the underlying need or desire it’s designed to protect. You suggest that the new partner doesn’t want sex to happen every date night because she doesn’t want to feel cheap – did she mean she wouldn’t want to have sex with your partner on each of their dates (my interpretation), or that she didn’t want you and your partner to? If the former, that sounds like a reasonable safety rule for herself and her own comfort levels, but I’m not quite sure how the other interpretation makes sense, and agree with Mischa that agreements should be negotiated by all parties to whom it will apply, rather than imposed as a rule. 

Regardless, my instinct is to focus less on her actual rule and more on the motivation behind it. Why would any of those scenarios trigger her to feel cheap? Very often people fight hard for “their rule” without realizing there are other ways to get what they actually want, perhaps less restrictively and/or in ways that incorporate others’ needs as well.

Good luck to all, and let us know how it turns out.

Am I POLY, or just HORNY?

You run a fantastic blog! Thanks for allowing us to ask these sensitive questions in safety and openness. 🙂

I read your excellent post on Open Relationships vs. Polyamory and, after examining my feelings and situation, I’m still uncertain as to where I fall.
I’ve been happily married for over two years. My wife is a delightful, open-minded and intelligent young woman who’s made no qualms about identifying as bisexual with strongly lesbian tendencies. While I tend to identify as straight as I feel no physical attraction to men – there are some very handsome guys out there, sure, but I don’t feel anywhere near as compelled by them as I am by women – I do feel strong attractions to women who aren’t my wife. I used to chalk this up to either animal instinct or (in a few cases) old emotional attachments, but as time has gone on I’ve felt such things towards women I’ve had no past history with.
The other thing that belies the “it’s just horniness” argument I keep trying to use on myself is that these ladies to whom I’m attracted invoke emotional reactions as well as sexual. Not the deep and abiding love I have for my wife, mind you, but the sort of bonds I forge with close friends. I care about them, delight in their triumphs and want to comfort them in their sorrow, make myself available to them and wish them every measure of happiness. In short: I’m not just looking for fuckbuddies.
I come from a very Christian upbringing. I still hold onto the barest of tenets of that faith – loving God, loving my neighbor and testing everything so I can hold on to what’s good – so for a long time I’ve considered such impulses and feelings to be wrong. The more I embrace them, however, the more at peace I feel. I feel more comfortable in my own skin knowing that I make women happy, even if they’re women who aren’t my wife. I think this might be pointing me in a direction I’ve never considered. I may, in fact, be poly.
I feel strongly about freedom, about the rights of the LGBT community and how, especially in a country founded on liberty and a lack of persecution (in theory), people should be free to love, live and interact as they see fit as long as nobody’s getting hurt. But I don’t know exactly how to deal with this other than just going with my feelings. Have other polys had experiences like this, sort of a ‘coming out of the closet’ moment? Am I poly? Or am I just putting emotions behind normal straight horniness and overthinking the situation? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Sincerely yours,

Confused And Restless

Dear CAR (No relation to K.I.T.T., right?):

Here’s an interesting question for you in response to your question for us. Is our sexual orientation determined by our actions, or our feelings? If someone is born with a preference for homosexual eroticism, but never acts on it, are they “gay”? Conversely, could a straight person choose to have a homosexual experience, and still be “straight”?

If you believe that “being poly” means acting on your feelings, then you might not be, if you haven’t done so. That might make you repressed, and possibly affect you psychologically or manifest in other ways, but it doesn’t make you polyamorous.

If however you believe that being poly means having emotionally-charged feelings for multiple people, then – yep, you’re poly, regardless of how you might attempt to rationalize those feelings away. If you FEEL what you describe, you’ve proven that you’re capable of feeling that way. Of course, actually living a poly lifestyle and being in a poly relationship involves consistent honesty, openness, and communication between you and your partner/s – who knows whether or not you are or will in the future achieve that type of relationship? But the answer you’re looking for within yourself, is yes.

And you’re not alone. I think it’s clear most humans are *born* poly. Most of us (here in the United States, at least) are socialized away from it from a young age by external ideals of what is expected of us regarding monogamous romantic relationships, and only some of us are able to re/connect with our natural ability to develop and maintain multiple relationships with lovers as well as nonromantic friends and family. It would be completely illogical to suggest that we have the innate ability to care deeply for many people in our lives, but somehow lose that ability when sex or romance is involved. It makes much more sense to look at polyamory as an inherent capacity, a plus to be nurtured rather than a negative to be repressed, without which we are in fact LIMITED to caring for one person at a time, not from choice but because we have no other options available to us. Many people see a poly mindset as an enlightened or enhanced one, which allows many more options than those who are biologically limited to monogamy. It’s like having a Swiss Army knife at your disposal rather than a straight blade. (Make your own “gay blade” joke here, if you like.)

Your thoughts as you describe them show you have the ability to develop and maintain multiple emotional relationships with different women, but you are also apparently concerned with what that might mean, for your intellect or for your faith. I think you already know which of those is likely to win in a fight over which “feels” right, but I personally don’t believe the two can’t healthily coexist. All I can tell you is you may still CHOOSE a monogamous path of action if you want to do so, but the fact you are feeling the way you describe tells me you are what you consider “poly”. It remains now to be seen how and whether you act on it. Personally, I always recommend total honesty and communication with your loved ones regarding your feelings; it luckily sounds like you have a partner who would be supportive.

Michelle?

It certainly sounds like your wife would be receptive to the topic of polyamory since she’s bisexual and presumably can understand how someone can find love in different people, even if she doesn’t actually practice polyamory. And I applaud you for your impulse to spread happiness outside your marriage – the world needs more of that, always.

I was in a situation similar to yours in 2007. I was in a relationship with someone who was married, and we explored a triad together, which later turned into a “V.” I chafed at being in this position until I discovered the poly community in New York and came out as poly in January 2008. That was when I got the vocabulary and the awareness that I was in a poly situation but still following a monogamous mindset; a dichotomy that was the source of my discomfort. I realized that in order to be happy, I had to align my beliefs with my reality as much as possible.

As Leon says, this is all about communication. Since you wrote to us, I figure you are looking for advice, so I suggest that the first thing you do is talk to your wife and find out her feelings about the possibility of opening your marriage. Your marriage is an agreement between the two of you, and it shouldn’t be altered without mutual consent. So if you think about your marriage as an agreement, what exactly did you agree to? Sexual fidelity? Emotional exclusivity? Companionship? Eternal friendship? Ask yourself what your marriage means to you first and then ask her.

Then it’s time to negotiate. Talk gently about what you want in your heart, for yourself and for her. Do either or both of you feel constrained by your marriage agreement? Maybe you’re just looking for explicit permission to form close relationships with other women, and maybe she wants the same thing! Maybe it involves sex; maybe it doesn’t. Start by figuring out what is the core of your existing relationship – what must be preserved to make you both feel safe and secure. What is the most important thing that you give one another? Whatever that is, make sure to protect it.

Beyond that, create a safe space for yourselves to talk about your hopes, dreams and fears. Establish up-front that nothing will happen without explicit agreement so you can talk freely without misunderstanding your intentions. Think about how you will feel if your wife starts dating a woman or another man – what would you need from her to keep your marriage strong? Make new agreements as you go, knowing that they can be renegotiated in the future so you can take things in small steps. For example, if you’re both not ready to be poly, make an agreement to revisit the idea in six months, or a year. Ultimately, your marriage will be stronger if you both feel comfortable talking freely about things that maybe previously you thought were assumed. This is one way in which poly techniques can be useful for monogamous people.

All that said, as Leon pointed out, you can choose to follow a monogamous path after you’ve had this talk – maybe that will turn out to be the best option for both of you. But at least you will know that you made a CHOICE, rather than just assumptions or accepting the status quo.

If the two of you decide to explore poiyamory together, I strongly encourage you to seek out resources to help your find your way, either from several books available, your local polyamory group chapter, or come to an Open Love NY event if you can travel. Every relationship is unique, but it’s always good to see others’ mistakes so you can avoid obvious pitfalls. Getting support for a lifestyle that is not always accepted by family and the larger community also increases your chances for success.